The Magic of Stillness

or inner wisdom

Some might call me lazy. Maybe I am a little indulgent. I know that I’ve definitely come to relish “stillness.” I also recognize what a privilege it is to be able to listen to my body and give myself quiet down time. But stillness can be found in active time too…

You might know, if you’re an avid consumer of the SMP content, that as a life coach I received specialized training in the Strengthsfinder 2.0 profiling tool. My top two themes when I took this test back in 2015 were “Input” and “Learner.” These were in the top five of nearly every person I ever worked with using this tool. When we were first dating (circa 2001), my now husband turned me onto NPR and I discovered that I loved storytelling programs like This American Life and Radiolab, world news became much more interesting than it had been in the past for me, and I looked forward every week to the latest episode of The Splendid Table. And then podcasts hit the scene, followed by smart phones, then the app world, and like the info junkie I was, I was all in! 

We live in the “information age” and who could have predicted what a nightmare it would become? We all thought we were getting smarter, but have we just changed the way our brains work and become dependent on others to tell us what and how to think? We crave a constant drip of information, and I suspect this is another way of numbing and not allowing any inner work. I think we congratulate ourselves for “learning” and staying in touch with what’s happening in the world, but I wonder if the trade-off is being out of touch with ourselves?

Information input became a constant companion to me. Household chores became so much more enjoyable with a continuous stream of stories, deep dives into interesting topics all carefully curated to capture my attention. Now it took little effort to motivate myself out the door for a walk; in fact, it was an excuse to leave behind other tasks and lose myself in content. And road trips offered the ultimate audio binge; I’ve logged far more than my fair share of hours behind the wheel on epic road trips, all made possible by my besties: Audible and pocketcast. (And I was touched and proud when my daughter developed her own podcast habit around the early age of 12, beginning with Radiolab, and moving on to Welcome to Nightvale then all things McElroy brothers. I know, I know. This led her nowhere good.) 

It reached a point where anytime I had a household task to complete or I was waiting for an appointment to start, or I had a moment in between this thing and that thing, or there was a slow bit in a show I was watching with my husband, I’d…can you guess?...pull out my phone. Check email or Twitter, scroll headlines, play a game, finding it very difficult to allow even the smallest gap in the input. 

But then eventually, I noticed how when I went to scroll, there would be this sense of dissatisfaction. I recognized that I was looking for a certain level of “hit” that would signal that the experience was complete. You probably see where this is going. Clearly I was addicted to this input. I’d pull out my phone about a half an hour before I’d normally head to bed to check Twitter, and find that I couldn’t put it down until I got the just the right, shall we say, (outrage) high? (For awhile, my bio even said, “I’m just here for the sarcasm.”) And it got harder and harder to achieve that high. Eventually I’d pull myself out of my dissociated state to realize I’d been at it for hours and felt awful. I’d then have a difficult time falling asleep and pay for this little adventure the next day with fatigue and brain fog. 

I started choosing not to go on Twitter. My mood almost immediately improved. I stopped reading articles about the Gender wars. Mood got even better. I started listening to music more often than podcasts and, yep, you guessed it, even better still. I know I’m not sharing anything new here. Most of us have watched The Social Dilemma at this point. We’ve read The Coddling of the American Mind. We know how much all this input is affecting our children’s brains. Do we always recognize when we’re modeling this obsessive addiction for them? But, but…you might be saying, I’m looking at important things! (Or is this just my self talk?)

Like most moms who discover their child’s mind has been captured by this dangerous ideology, I went into full on Learner/Input mode. We want to learn all we can, be as informed as possible, so we know how best to help them. The instinct is virtuous. But doesn’t it seem like the more we learn, the less we seem to trust ourselves? The more we research, the more destabilized we feel and the more our confidence dissipates? I know I’m speaking in generalizations, and I also know that it was super helpful to find sound voices out in the world like Lisa Marchiano, Sasha, and Stella; and for many–myself included–finding them restored some sanity. I think there comes a point, though, where the immersion in all things gender, or even monitoring the general state of the world becomes depressing and debilitating. 

I know I reached a point where anytime I took a little trip into Twitter, I’d come out feeling gross, dirty. I noticed that more stories about how other families were being destroyed by gender ideology just created more fear and didn’t support me to engage in a healthy way with my own trans-identified daughter. Instead, the obsessive research kept me in a state of constant anxiety. I could compare my confidence, the condition of my relationships, and my emotional state when I was spending lots of time in research mode vs when I just engaged in real life, and it was obvious which mode supported my health, wellness, stability. Which mom does my daughter need me to be? The scared, erratic mom who doesn’t trust herself, or the stable, grounded mom who makes mistakes sometimes, but embraces and models confidence in the human experience? 

I decided to go with the latter. I still wander into the online wilderness sometimes. (I also have a drink sometimes and eat junk food on occasion.) Every time I choose to go there, I feel a little naughty. And I’m reminded how much I dislike it. I’ll lose an hour or two that I’ll regret for a minute, then I’ll forgive myself. (Self-compassion is pretty magical too!) Clearly, I still spend time online. You wouldn’t be reading this if I didn’t. I now put more thought into managing the input and pay close attention to what makes me feel better or worse so I can be more selective. When on a walk or in the car, I now spend only about half the time listening to something. I (mostly) choose podcasts that have little connection to gender, programs that encourage hopefulness and healing. 

When it comes to household chores, I find I prefer music now to podcasts, and that sometimes even that’s too much noise. When waiting for an appointment, I leave my phone in my bag, and take in my surroundings, or just close my eyes. Blessed quiet. Once in awhile, I’ll pick up my phone in a moment of downtime, look at it, realize there’s absolutely nothing I want to check, set it back down, and relish the absence of input. The stillness.  

I’ve also decided I don’t need to be the expert on all things gender. That was a PhD program that I never chose for myself in the first place. Input mode eventually leads me to a depressed mood and much anxiety about the state of things, of humanity. Do I really need the weight of the world on my shoulders? Who does that help? It certainly doesn’t result in my modeling adulthood in an attractive manner for my kid who’s clearly still hesitant to fully engage in it.  

We get lots of messages about how to be more efficient, how to pack more into our days, how important it is to not waste a single moment of this one precious life. I notice when I’m moving through the world in this way, it speeds up the days. Weeks whiz by, barely marked by holidays and other special events, and everything just runs together. But when I slow down and unplug, the hours lengthen, the minutes linger. I can tell you, at 53, I’m really not interested in hurrying my life up. Time online starts to feel like a black hole sucking that one precious life away. 

Have you ever heard that saying, “I’ll sleep when I’m dead”? Well, I’ve decided sleep is delicious. I often indulge in what I’ve started to call Einstein naps. (I heard somewhere that when he was stumped on a problem, Einstein would go lay down for 20ish minutes and find that solutions would come to him.) I don’t have a set meditation practice, but sometimes, I’ll just lay down for an Einstein nap and invite wisdom to visit me. Instead of looking up every damn thing that pops into my mind, thinking I need online advice about how to go about something, I pause. Breath. Allow any solution that feels like presenting itself. Trust that things will work out. Maybe not in the way we think they should, but it’s funny how things have a way of sorting themselves out if we don’t make too big of a fuss about them. 

Stillness seems so rare these days. It’s become a precious gift we now need to consciously give ourselves. And I notice the more stillness I allow, the more grace, the more self-compassion I give myself, the smoother things seem to flow, and the less anxious I am about some nebulous future. Forcing things is exhausting. I can’t control tomorrow, but I can be curious about it. I can know it will not be what I imagine–it so rarely is. So instead, I can get excited for the mystery and know there will be surprises, both joyous and painful. And those moments will pass, and there will be other types of experiences: mundane, awe-inspiring, satisfying, boring, scary, peaceful, etc. 

There also seems to be this other thing, some something, what to call it? I don’t want to say “force” because whatever this thing is, it ‘s not action-oriented. It’s stillness-oriented. I’m sure some would say it’s God. Some, the Universe. I’m wondering if we’re just way more connected than we currently understand. Connected to what? I don’t know. I’ve started calling it my inner wisdom. But for so many of us, it’s really quiet. I think it’s there in all of us, but we’ve forgotten how to get still and listen to it. (Or maybe we were encouraged to distrust this thing?) I think we may need to ease up a bit on all the going and doing and listmaking, and just allow. When we’re in motion, it’s hard to hear it. It thrives in stillness. Frantic energy seems to drive it away–at least that’s how it seems to work for me. 

And it’s oh, so yummy! And grounded, which may seem a weird description for something so ethereal. I feel supported by it. Sometimes it comes to me in dreams and tells me in creative ways to just chill. Stop trying so hard. Delight in little things. Notice the magic in the Universe. Seek that which is meaningful, soak up precious moments of relationship, create things that want to burst out of you, laugh with your loved ones, laugh with strangers. 

Photo by Imani on Unsplash

I’ve taken up crocheting. The internet is still good for something, after all! I find that when I want to reach for my phone, reaching for a quiet project is more nourishing. Been making these wildly colorful yarn collages, and I doubt anyone else would think they’re beautiful, but I don’t much care. I fall into a flow state and my mind settles, and a few hours later there’s this thing I made.  Jigsaw puzzles are soothingly meditative. There are these glittery ones with beautiful pieces that seem to do something special for my brain. I’ll work on a single puzzle for weeks, and not concern myself with the ugly card table taking up space in my dining room. Even doing laundry and emptying the dishwasher have become quiet, meditative tasks. Neatly (quietly) folding, sorting, stacking, storing. 

Once upon a time, I was addicted to information. I was proud of my extensive vocabulary and the abstract ideas I could nerd out on. I thought the more I knew, the more value I had. Okay, let’s be honest, I can still get a buzz and an ego bump from it, but all that seems a bit less important to me now. I recognize what’s in my heart is just as vital as the knowledge in my brain. My single, precious life can feel so fleeting and fragile, but that same life can be filled with millions of moments I can meet with a sense of exploration, if I so choose. Everything feels more abundant when I think of life this way.

Now I know a lot less about what’s going on in the world each day. Some may think this selfish, irresponsible even. I go back to who is it helping for me to carry the weight of the world’s problems and feel impotent to change them? My favorite quote right now: 

Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today, I am wise so I am changing myself. -Rumi

One more weird little story to support the magic of stillness. This is something that’s kept me connected to my inner wisdom, even throughout my whole wild and fascinating love affair with information. I can’t stand looking for lost things. I refuse to do it. I very much like when things have a place, and if they go missing, it seems so incredibly inefficient to spend hours tearing things apart and checking every nook and cranny. My strategy has always been to get still, close my eyes, and ask myself where I left it. Give it a few quiet minutes, and if I was the last person to have the thing, this works every time. I’ll emerge from that stillness and go straight to where it’s hiding.

If you haven’t yet, maybe dabble in some stillness. You might be delighted to discover that what you’ve been looking for just might find you.

If you’re already a convert to quiet, how do you practice (or allow it)? What are some of the things you’ve discovered? Have things changed for you? If so, please share!